AT&T Labs Research

Building Speech Applications Just Got Easier: AT&T Releases Speech API

by: Staff, June 29, 2012

Speech interfaces are becoming de rigueur because users find them easy to use. But implementing these interfaces is not easy. Speech technologies are complex and require expert knowledge. AT&T should know. The AT&T WATSON^SM speech engine represents decades of speech research and over 20 years of continuous use in the company’s large-scale dialog systems.

For the first time, this advanced technology is being made available to outside developers as the Speech API. Now developers have an easy way to incorporate fast, accurate speech recognition to build voice-enabled applications. Read more

◄

►

AT&T at Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) 2012

At this year's Joint Statistical Meetings conference, researchers from AT&T are presenting four papers (go here for times and dates), and are chairing the following sessions: Miscellaneous Computational Methods (Bob Bell), Predicting for Profit: Data Modeling Competitions on Kaggle.com (Chris Volinsky), Computational Bayes and MCMC (Yi Fang Chen), and Computing with Time Series Data (Dongyu Lin).

Encouraging women to consider STEM majors

Women and minorities have traditionally avoided majoring in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). But as the need grows for more scientists and engineers, STEM fields must become more inclusive.

In this US News and Report interview, Alicia Abella, executive director of technical research at AT&T Labs, describes what colleges, professionals, and parents can do to encourage women to consider STEM majors.

Turn When the Steering Wheel Tells You

Digital services in the car have the potential to make driving easier and safer—if they don’t distract the driver. A haptic steering wheel, by using tactile-based signals, may more safely convey navigation information than audio or visual cues.

Other cloud-based services recently showcased by AT&T Research include a bio-acoustic door lock, a car system that alerts when you forget an item, and Air Graffiti for air-tagging locations. Read more.

Charles Kalmanek named to net-neutrality panel

Charles Kalmanek, Vice President of Research, AT&T Labs, Inc., has been named to the Open Internet Advisory Committee. Set up by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), this committee will study the impact of the FCC's 2010 net-neutrality order and make recommendations for preserving the open Internet.

Representatives from Netflix, Disney, Mozilla, and other companies will also serve on the committee.

Innovation: Changing the Face of Telecom

Innovation is usually associated with small startups quick to see the changes in the technology landscape and nimble enough to get out in front of those changes.

But large telecoms, including AT&T, are surprisingly innovative; they have to be or risk becoming irrelevant. A recent Pipeline article compares and contrasts the different approaches taken by large telecoms to advance and incorporate cutting-edge technology.

2002 Paper on tomography stands test of time

This year’s ACM SIGMETRICS conference conferred its Test of Time Award on Network Tomography on General Topologies, a paper co-authored by Nick Duffield. The award, given each year to a previous conference paper whose impact is still felt 10-12 years after publication, cited the paper’s pioneering work in network tomography, particularly its novel methods to estimate delay, packet loss, and other measures of performance.